38 year-old Wesley Emmanuel - better known as "Wesley Snipes" is free tonight of the charge of murder after 6 years of fighting a trial in the Supreme Court. He was accused of killing 36 year-old Emi-hidio "Emi" Gomez on July 16, 2008.
This was Emmanuel's second trial, after the first one in November 2011 ended in a hung jury. His retrial began last week before Justice Troadio Gonzalez, where Crown Counsel Javier Chan, led the prosecution against him.
Before there could have been any evidence presented against Emmanuel, his attorney, Ernest Staine, challenged a caution statement that the prosecutor intended to be tendered as evidence. In that statement, Emmanuel was said to have confessed to the crime that he targeted a truck with a lowboy trailer which was transporting a bulldozer through the Coastal Road. Gomez was on the truck with his employer, when 3 men held up the truck, shot the driver, and hung Gomez from a tree with his own belt in the Banana Bank area.
This statement was tested, and it was ruled inadmissible because it was found that Emmanuel gave it under oppression. He wasn't fed while in police custody for 2 days.
Crown Counsel Chan then told the court that he had not further evidence to offer, and at that point, Justice Gonzalez directed the jury to return a no-guilty verdict. Emmanuel was free to leave court and go home since his detention in 2008.
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